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    "slug": "vol-2-anthropogenesis",
    "name": "Volume II — Anthropogenesis"
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      "name": "The Secret Doctrine",
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 43,
    "slug": "93-iii-the-fossil-relics-of-man-and-the-anthropoid-ape-675",
    "title": "III. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE ANTHROPOID APE ... 675",
    "of": 49,
    "words": 7641,
    "text": "## III. THE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE ANTHROPOID APE ... 675\n\n\nThe Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, vol 2, pt 3, ch 3\n\n###### The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 675 DRYOPITHECUS, THE MISSING LINK.\n\n#### § III.\nTHE FOSSIL RELICS OF MAN AND THE\nANTHROPOID APE.\n\n-------\n\n**A**.\n\n**G**EOLOGICAL **F**ACTS BEARING ON THE **Q**UESTION\nOF THEIR **R**ELATIONSHIP.\n\n**T**HE data derived from scientific research as to \"primeval\nman\" and the ape lend no countenance to theories deriving\nthe former from the latter. \"Where, then, must we look for\nprimeval man?\" still queries Mr. Huxley, after having vainly\nsearched for him in the very depths of the quaternary strata.\n\"Was the oldest *Homo sapiens *Pliocene or Miocene,\nor yet more ancient? In still older strata do the fossilized bones\nof *an ape more anthropoid,* or* a man more pithecoid *than\nany yet known, await the researches of some unborn palaeontologist?\nTime will show . . . .\" (\"Man's Place in Nature,\"\np. 159).\n\nIt will -- undeniably -- and thus vindicate the anthropology of\nthe Occultists. Meanwhile, in his eagerness to vindicate Mr. Darwin's\n*Descent of Man, *Mr. Boyd Dawkins believes he has all but\nfound the \"missing link\" -- in theory. It was due to\ntheologians more than to geologists that, till nearly 1860, man\nhad been considered a relic no older than the Adamic orthodox\n6,000 years. As Karma would have it though, it was left to a French\nAbbe -- l'abbe Bourgeois -- to give this easy-going theory even\na worse blow than had been given to it by the discoveries of Boucher\nde Perthes. Everyone knows that the Abbe discovered and brought\nto light good evidence that man already existed during the Miocene\nperiod; for flints of undeniably human making were excavated from\nMiocene strata. In the words of the author of \"Modern Science\nand Modern Thought\": --\n\n\"They must either have been chipped by man, or, as Mr. Boyd\nDawkins supposes, by the Dryopithecus or some other anthropoid\nape which had a dose of intelligence so much superior to the gorilla,\nor chimpanzee, as to be able to fabricate tools. But in this case\nthe problem would be solved and the missing link discovered, for\nsuch an ape might well have been the *ancestor *of Palaeolithic\nman.\"\n\nOr -- *the descendant of Eocene Man, *which is a variant\noffered to the theory. Meanwhile, the Dryopithecus with such fine\nmental endowments is yet to be discovered. On the other hand,\nNeolithic and even Palaeolithic man having become an absolute\ncertainty, -- and, as the same author justly observes: \"If\n100,000,000 years have elapsed since\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 676 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nthe earth became sufficiently solidified to support vegetable\nand animal life, the Tertiary period may have lasted for 5,000,000;\nor for 10,000,000 years, if the life-sustaining order of things\nhas lasted, as Lyell supposes, for at least 200,000,000 years\"\n-- why should not another theory be tried? Let us carry man, as\nan hypothesis, to the close of Mesozoic times -- admitting *argumenti\ncausa *that the (much more recent) higher apes then existed!\nThis would allow ample time to man and the modern apes to have\ndiverged from the mythical \"*ape more anthropoid,*\"*\n*and even for the latter to have degenerated into those that\nare found *mimicking *man in using \"branches of trees\nas clubs, and cracking cocoa-nuts with hammer and stones.\"*\nSome savage tribes of hillmen in India build their abodes on trees,\njust as the gorillas build their dens. The question, which of\nthe two, the beast or the man, has become the imitator of the\nother, is scarcely an open one, even granting Mr. Boyd Dawkins'\ntheory. The fanciful character of his hypothesis, is, however,\ngenerally admitted. It is argued that while in the Pliocene and\nMiocene periods there were true apes and baboons, and man was\nundeniably contemporaneous with the former of those times -- though\nas we see orthodox anthropology still hesitates in the teeth of\nfacts to place him in the era of the Dryopithecus, which latter\n\"has been considered by some anatomists as in some respects\nsuperior to the chimpanzee or the gorilla\" -- yet, in the\nEocene there have been no other fossil *primates *unearthed\nand no pithecoid stocks found save a few extinct lemurian forms.\nAnd we find it also *hinted *that the Dryopithecus *may\nhave been *the \"missing link,\" though the brain of\nthe creature no more warrants the theory than does the brain of\nthe modern gorilla. (*Vide *also Gaudry's speculations.)\n\nNow we would ask who among the Scientists is ready to prove that\n*there was no man *in existence in the early Tertiary period?\nWhat is it that prevented his presence? Hardly thirty years ago\nhis existence any farther back than 6, or 7,000 years was indignantly\ndenied. Now he is refused admission into the Eocene age. Next\ncentury it may become a question whether man was not contemporary\nwith the \"flying Dragons;\" the pterodactyl, the plesiosaurus\nand iguanodon, etc., etc. Let us listen, however, to the echo\nof Science.\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* This the way *primitive man *must have acted? We do not\nknow of men, not even of savages, in our age, who are known to\nhave imitated the apes who live side by side with them in the\nforests of America and the islands. We do know of large apes who,\ntamed and living in houses, will mimic men to the length of donning\nhats and coats. The writer had personally a chimpanzee who, without\nbeing taught, opened a newspaper and pretended to read in it.\nIt is the descending generations, the children, who mimic their\nparents -- not the reverse.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 677 INSURMOUNTABLE DIFFICULTIES.\n\n\"Now wherever anthropoid apes lived, it is clear that, whether\nas a question of anatomical structure, or of climate and surroundings,\nman, or *some creature which was the ancestor of man, *might\nhave lived also. Anatomically speaking, apes and monkeys are as\nmuch special variations of the mammalian type as man, whom they\nresemble, bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, and the physical\nanimal man is simply an instance of the quadrumanous type specialised\nfor erect posture and a larger brain* . . . . If he could survive,\nas we know he did, the adverse conditions and extreme vicissitudes\nof the Glacial period, there is no reason why he might not have\nlived in the semi-tropical climate of the Miocene period, when\na genial climate extended even to Greenland and Spitzbergen .\n. . \"* *(\"*Modern Science and Modern Thought,*\"*\np. *152.)\n\nWhile most of the men of Science, who are uncompromising in their\nbelief in the descent of man from an \"extinct anthropoid\nmammal,\" will not accept even the bare tenability of any\nother theory than an ancestor common to man and the Dryopithecus,\nit is refreshing to find in a work of real scientific value such\na margin for compromise. Indeed, it is as wide as it can be made\nunder the circumstances, *i.e.*, without immediate danger\nof getting knocked off one's feet by the tidal wave of \"science-adulation.\"\nBelieving that the difficulty of accounting \"for the development\nof *intellect *and* morality *by evolution is *not\nso great as that presented by the difference as to physical structure**\n*between man and the highest animal,\" the same author\nsays: --\n\n\"But it is not so easy to see how this difference of physical\nstructure arose, and how a being came into existence which had\nsuch a brain and hand, and such undeveloped capabilities for an\nalmost unlimited progress. The difficulty is this: the difference\nin structure between the lowest existing race of man and the highest\nexisting ape is too great to admit of the possibility of one being\nthe direct descendant of the other. The negro in some respects\nmakes a slight approximation towards the Simian type. His skull\nis narrower, his brain less capacious, his muzzle more projecting,\nhis arm longer than those of the\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* It is asked, whether it would change one iota of the scientific\ntruth and fact contained in the above sentence if it were to read:\n\"the ape is simply an instance of the biped type specialized\nfor going on all fours, generally, and a smaller brain.\"\n*Esoterically *speaking, this is the real truth, and not\nthe reverse.\n\n** We cannot follow Mr. Laing here. When avowed Darwinists like\nHuxley point to \"the *great gulf *which intervenes between\nthe lowest ape and the highest man in *intellectual *power,\"\nthe \"*enormous gulf *. . . between them,\" the \"*immeasurable\nand practically infinite *divergence of the Human from the\nSimian stirps\" (*Man*'*s Place in Nature, *pp.\n102-3); when even the physical basis of mind -- the brain -- so*\nvastly *exceeds in size that of the highest existing apes;\nwhen men like Wallace are forced to invoke the agency of extra-terrestrial\nintelligences in order to explain the rise of such a creature\nas the Pithecanthropus alalus, or speechless savage of Haeckel,\nto the level of the large-brained and *moral* man of to-day\n-- it is idle to dismiss Evolutionist puzzles so lightly. If the\n*structural *evidence is so unconvincing and, taken as a\nwhole, so hostile to Darwinism, the difficulties as to the \"how\"\nof the Evolution of the human *mind *by natural selection\nare tenfold greater.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 678 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\naverage European man. Still he is essentially a man, and separated\nby a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or the gorilla. *Even the\nidiot or cretin, *whose brain is no larger and intelligence\nno greater than that of the chimpanzee, is *an arrested man,\nnot an ape.*\"\n\n\"If, therefore, the Darwinian theory holds good in the case\nof man and ape, we must go back to some common ancestor from whom\nboth may have originated . . . . But to establish this as a *fact\n*and not a *theory *we require to find that ancestral\nform, or, at any rate, some intermediate forms tending towards\nit . . . . in other words . . . . the missing link! Now it must\nbe admitted that, hitherto, not only have no such missing links\nbeen discovered, but the oldest known human sculls and skeletons\nwhich date from the Glacial period, and are probably at least\n100,000 years old, show no very decided approximation towards\nany such pre-human type. On the contrary, *one of the oldest\ntypes, *that of the men of the sepulchral cave of Cro-Magnon,*\n*is that of a fine race, tall in stature, large in brain, and*\n*on the whole superior to many of the existing races of mankind.\n*The reply of course is that the time is insufficient, *and\nif man and the ape had a common ancestor, *that as a highly\ndeveloped anthropoid ape, certainly, and man, probably, already\nexisted in the Miocene period, such ancestor must be sought still\nfurther back at a distance compared with which the whole Quaternary\nperiod sinks into insignificance . . . . It may well make us hesitate\nbefore we admit that man . . . is alone an exception. . . . This\nis more difficult to believe, as the ape family which man (?)\nso closely resembles . . . . contains numerous branches which\ngraduate into one another, but the extremes of which differ more\nwidely than man does from the highest of the ape series. If a\nspecial creation is required for man, *must there not have been\nspecial creations for the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orang,\n*and for at least 100 different species of ape and monkeys\nwhich are all built on the same lines?\" (p. 182, \"Modern\nScience, etc.\")\n\nThere *was *a \"special creation\" for man, and a\n\"special creation\" for the ape,* his *progeny;\nonly on other lines than ever bargained for by Science. Albert\nGaudry and others give some weighty reasons why man cannot be\nregarded as the crown of an ape-stock. When one finds that not\nonly was the \"primeval savage\" (?) a reality in the\nMiocene times, but that, as de Mortillet shows, the flint relics\nhe has left behind him were splintered *by* *fire *in\nthat remote epoch; when we learn that the Dryopithecus, *alone\nof the anthropoids, *appears in those strata, what is the natural\ninference? That the Darwinians are in a quandary. The very manlike\nGibbon is *still in the same low grade of development, as it\nwas when it co-existed with Man at the close of the Glacial Period.\n*It has not appreciably altered since the Pliocene times. Now\nthere is little to choose between the Dryopithecus and the existing\nanthropoids -- gibbon, gorilla, etc. If, then, the Darwinian theory\nis all-sufficient, how are we to \"explain\" the evolution\nof this\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* A race which MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy regard as a branch\nof the *same stock *whence the *Canary Island Guanches\n*sprung -- offshoots of the Atlanteans, in short.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 679 MATERIALISM IS PUZZLED.\n\nape into Man during the first half of the Miocene? The time is\nfar too short for such a theoretical transformation. The extreme\nslowness with which variation in species supervenes renders the\nthing inconceivable -- more especially on the Natural Selection\nhypothesis. The enormous mental and structural gulf between a\nsavage acquainted with fire and the mode of kindling it, and a\nbrutal anthropoid, is too much to bridge even in idea, during\nso contracted a period. Let the Evolutionists push back the process\ninto the preceding *Eocene, *if they prefer to do so; let\nthem even trace both Man and Dryopithecus to a common ancestor;\nthe unpleasant consideration has, nevertheless, to be faced that\nin Eocene strata the anthropoid fossils are as conspicuous by\ntheir absence, as is the fabulous *pithecanthropus *of Haeckel.\nIs an exit out of this *cul de sac *to be found by an appeal\nto the \"unknown,\" and a reference with Darwin to the\n\"imperfection of the geological record\"? So be it; but\nthe same right of appeal must be accorded equally to the Occultists,\ninstead of remaining the monopoly of puzzled materialism. Physical\nman, we say, existed before the first bed of the Cretaceous rocks\nwas deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary Age, the most\nbrilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at\na period when the Haeckelian *man-ape* is conceived to have\nroamed through the primeval forests, and Mr. Grant Allen's putative\nancestor to have swung himself from bough to bough with his hairy\nmates, the degenerated Liliths of the Third Race Adam. Yet there\nwere no anthropoid apes in the brighter days of the civilization\nof the Fourth Race; but Karma is a mysterious law, and no respecter\nof persons. The monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean\ngiants, \"*blurred copies*\"* *of their bestial\nsires, and hence of modern man (Huxley), now mislead and overwhelm\nwith error the speculative Anthropologist of European Science.\n\nWhere did the first men live? Some Darwinists say in Western Africa,\nsome in Southern Asia, others, again, believe in an independent\norigin of human stocks in Asia and America from a Simian ancestry\n(Vogt). Haeckel, however, advances gaily to the charge. Starting\nfrom his \"prosimiae\" . . . \"the ancestor common\nto all other catarrhini, including man\" -- a \"link\"\nnow, however, disposed of for good by recent anatomical discoveries!\n-- he endeavours to find a habitat for the primeval Pithecanthropus\nalalus. \"In all probability it (the transformation of animal\ninto man) occurred in Southern Asia, in which region many evidences\nare forthcoming that here was the original home of the different\nspecies of men. Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest\ncradle of the human race, but **L**EMURIA, *a continent\nthat lay to the south of Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface\nof the Indian Ocean. *(*Vide infra, *\"Scientific\nand geological proofs of the former existence of several\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 680 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nsubmerged continents.\") \"The period during which the\nevolution of the anthropoid apes into apelike men took place was\nprobably the last part of the tertiary period, the Pliocene Age,\nand perhaps the Miocene, its forerunner.\" (Pedigree of Man,\np. 73.)\n\nOf the above speculations, the only one of any worth is that referring\nto Lemuria, which *was *the cradle of mankind -- of the physical\nsexual creature who materialized through long aeons out of the\nethereal hermaphrodites. Only, if it is proved that *Easter\nIsland *is an actual relic of Lemuria, we must believe that\naccording to Haeckel the \"*dumb ape-men*,\" just\nremoved from a brutal mammalian monster, built the gigantic portrait-statues,\nsome of which are now in the British Museum. Critics are mistaken\nin terming Haeckelian doctrines \"abominable, revolutionary,\nimmoral\" -- though materialism is the legitimate outcome\nof the ape-ancestor myth -- they are simply too absurd to demand\ndisproof.\n\n-------\n\n**B**.\n\n**W**ESTERN **E**VOLUTIONISM: **T**HE **C**OMPARATIVE\n**A**NATOMY OF **M**AN AND\n\nTHE **A**NTHROPOID IN **N**O **W**AY A **C**ONFIRMATION\nOF **D**ARWINISM.\n\nWe are told that while every other heresy against modern science\nmay be disregarded, this, our denial of the Darwinian theory as\napplied to Man, will be the one \"unpardonable\" sin.\nThe Evolutionists stand firm as rock on the evidence of similarity\nof structure between the ape and the man. The anatomical evidence,\nit is urged, is quite overpowering in this case; it is *bone\nfor bone,* and* muscle for muscle, *even the brain conformation\nbeing very much the same.\n\nWell, what of that? All this was known before King Herod; and\nthe writers of the *Ramayana, *the poets who sang the prowess\nand valour of Hanuman, the monkey-God, \"whose feats were\ngreat and Wisdom never rivalled,\" must have known as much\nabout his anatomy and brain as does any Haeckel or Huxley in our\nmodern day. Volumes upon volumes were written upon this similarity,\nin antiquity as in more modern times. Therefore, there is nothing\nnew whatever given to the world or to philosophy, in such volumes\nas Mivart's \"Man and Apes,\" or Messrs. Fiske and Huxley's\ndefence of Darwinism. But what are those *crucial *proofs\nof man's descent from a pithecoid ancestor? If the Darwinian theory\n*is not the true one -- *we are told -- if man and ape do\nnot descend from a common ancestor, then we are called upon to\nexplain the reason of: --\n\n(I.) The similarity of structure between the two; the fact that\nthe\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page 681]] HUXLEY CALLS THE DARWINISTS TO ORDER.\n\nhigher animal world -- man and beast -- is physically of one type\nor pattern.\n\n(II.) The presence of *rudimentary organs *in man, *i.e.*,\ntraces of former organs now atrophied by disuse. Some of these\norgans, it is asserted, could not have had any scope for employment,\nexcept for a semi-animal, semi-arboreal monster. Why, again, do\nwe find in Man those \"rudimentary\" organs (as useless\nas its rudimentary wing is to the* Apteryx *of Australia),\nthe vermiform appendix of the *coecum, *the ear muscles,*\nthe \"rudimentary tail\" (with which children are still\nsometimes born), etc., etc.?\n\nSuch is the war cry; and the cackle of the smaller fry among the\nDarwinians is louder, if possible, than even that of the scientific\nEvolutionists themselves!\n\nFurthermore, the latter themselves -- with their great leader\nMr. Huxley, and such eminent zoologists as Mr. Romanes and others\n-- while defending the Darwinian theory, are the first to confess\nthe almost insuperable difficulties in the way of its final demonstration.\nAnd there are as great men of science as the above-named, who\ndeny, most emphatically, the uncalled-for assumption, and loudly\ndenounce the unwarrantable exaggerations on the question of this\nsupposed similarity. It is sufficient to glance at the works of\nBroca, Gratiolet, of Owen, Pruner-Bey, and finally, at the last\ngreat work of de Quatrefages, \"*Introduction a l*'*Etude\ndes Races humaines, Questions generales,*\" to* *discover\nthe fallacy of the Evolutionists. We may say more: the exaggerations\nconcerning such similarity of structure between man and the anthropomorphous\nape have become so glaring and absurd of late, that even Mr. Huxley\nfound himself forced to protest against the too sanguine expectations.\nIt was that great anatomist personally who called the \"smaller\nfry\" to order, by declaring in one of his articles that the\ndifferences in the structure of the human body and that of the\nhighest anthropomorphous pithecoid, were not only *far from\nbeing trifling and unimportant, *but were, on the contrary,\nvery great and suggestive: \"each of the bones of the gorilla\nhas its own specific impress on it that distinguishes it from\na similar human bone.\" Among the existing creatures there\nis not one single intermediate form that could fill the gap between\nman and the ape. To ignore that gap, he added, \"was *as\nuncalled-for as it was absurd.*\"****\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* Professor Owen believes that these muscles -- the attollens,\nretrahens, and attrahens aurem -- were actively functioning in\nmen of the Stone Age. This may or may not be the case. The question\nfalls under the ordinary \"occult\" explanation, and involves\nno postulate of an \"animal progenitor\" to solve it.\n\n** Quoted in the Review of the \"*Introduction a l*'*Etude\ndes Races Humaines,*\"* by de Quatrefages. *We have\nnot Mr. Huxley's work at hand to quote from. Or to cite another\ngood authority: -- \"We find one of the most man-like apes\n(gibbon), in the [[Footnote continued on next page]]\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 682 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nFinally, the absurdity of such an *unnatural *descent of\nman is so palpable in the face of all the proofs and evidence\nof the skull of the pithecoid as compared to that of man, that\neven de Quatrefages resorted unconsciously to our esoteric theory\nby saying *that it is rather the apes that can claim descent\nfrom man *than *vice versa. *As proven by Gratiolet, with\nregard to the cavities of the brain of the anthropoids, in which\nspecies that organ develops in an inverse ratio to what would\nbe the case were the corresponding organs in man really the product\nof the development of the said organs in the apes -- the size\nof the human skull and its brain, as well as the cavities, increase\nwith the individual development of man. His intellect develops\nand increases with age, while his facial bones and jaws diminish\nand straighten, thus being more and more spiritualized: whereas\nwith the ape it is the reverse. In its youth the anthropoid is\nfar more intelligent and good-natured, while with age it becomes\nduller; and, as its skull recedes and seems to diminish as it\ngrows, its facial bones and jaws develop, the brain being finally\ncrushed, and thrown entirely back, to make with every day more\nroom for the animal type. The organ of thought -- the brain --\nrecedes and diminishes, entirely conquered and replaced by that\nof the wild beast -- the jaw apparatus.\n\nThus, as wittily remarked in the French work, a gorilla would\nhave a perfect right to address an Evolutionist, claiming its\nright of descent from himself. It would say to him, \"We,\nanthropoid apes, form a retrogressive departure from the human\ntype, and therefore our development and evolution are expressed\nby a transition from a human-like to an animal-like structure\nof organism; but in what way could *you, *men, descend from\nus -- how can you form a continuation of our genus? For, to make\nthis possible, your organization would have to differ still more\nthan ours does from the human structure, it would have to approach\nstill closer to that of the beast than ours does; and in such\na case justice demands that you should give up to us your place\nin nature. You are lower than we are, once that you insist on\ntracing your genealogy from our kind; for the structure of our\norganization and its development are such that we are unable to\ngenerate forms of a higher organization than our own.\"\n\nThis is where the Occult Sciences agree entirely with de Quatre-\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n[[Footnote continued from previous page]] *tertiary period,\n*and this species is *still in the same low grade,* and*\nside by side *with it at the end of the Ice-period, man is\nfound in the same high grade as to-day, the ape not having approximated\nmore nearly to the man, and modern man not having become further\nremoved from the ape than the first (fossil) man . . . these facts\ncontradict a theory of constant progressive development.\"\n(Pfaff.) When, according to Vogt, the the average Australian brain\n= 99.35 cub. inches; that of the gorilla 30.51 cub. in., and that\nof the chimpanzee only 25.45, the *giant gap *to be bridged\nby the advocate of \"Natural\" Selection becomes apparent.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 683 THE DARWINISTS AND THEIR OPPONENTS.\n\nfages. Owing to the very type of his development man *cannot\ndescend *from either an ape or an ancestor common to both,\nbut shows his origin from a type far superior to himself. And\nthis type is the \"Heavenly man\" -- the Dhyan Chohans,\nor the *Pitris *so-called, as shown in the first Part of\nthis volume. On the other hand, the pithecoids, the orang-outang,\nthe gorilla, and the chimpanzee *can*, and, as the Occult\nSciences teach, *do, *descend from the animalized Fourth\nhuman Root-Race, being the product of man and an extinct species\nof mammal -- whose *remote *ancestors were themselves the\nproduct of Lemurian bestiality -- which lived in the Miocene age.\nThe ancestry of this semi-human monster is explained in the Stanzas\nas originating in the sin of the \"Mind-less\" races of\nthe middle Third Race period.\n\nWhen it is borne in mind that all forms which now people the earth,\nare so many variations on *basic types *originally thrown\noff by the **M**AN of the Third and Fourth Round, such an evolutionist\nargument as that insisting on the \"unity of structural plan\"\ncharacterising all vertebrates, loses its edge. The basic types\nreferred to were very few in number in comparison with the multitude\nof organisms to which they ultimately gave rise; but a general\nunity of type has, nevertheless, been preserved throughout the\nages. The economy of Nature does not sanction the co-existence\nof several utterly opposed \"ground plans\" of organic\nevolution on one planet. Once, however, that the general drift\nof the occult explanation is formulated, inference as to detail\nmay well be left to the intuitive reader.\n\nSimilarly with the important question of the \"rudimentary\"\norgans discovered by anatomists in the human organism. Doubtless\nthis line of argument, when wielded by Darwin and Haeckel against\ntheir European adversaries, proved of great weight. Anthropologists,\nwho ventured to dispute the derivation of man from an animal ancestry,\nwere sorely puzzled how to deal with the presence of gill-clefts,\nwith the \"tail\" problem, and so on. Here again Occultism\ncomes to our assistance with the necessary data.\n\nThe fact is that, as previously stated, the human type is the\nrepertory of all potential organic forms, and the central point\nfrom which these latter radiate. In this postulate we find a true\n\"*Evolution*\"* *or* *\"*Unfolding*\"*\n-- *a sense which cannot be said to belong to the mechanical\ntheory of natural selection. Criticising Darwin's inference from\n\"rudiments,\" an able writer remarks: \"Why is it\nnot just as probably a true hypothesis to suppose that Man was\n*created with the rudimentary sketches in his organization,\nand that they became useful appendages in the lower animals into\nwhich man degenerated, *as to suppose that these parts existed\nin full development in the lower animals out of which man was\ngenerated?\" (\"Creation or Evolution?\" Geo. T. Curtis,\np. 76.)\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 684 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nRead for \"into which Man degenerated,\" \"the prototypes\nwhich man *shed *in the course of his astral developments,\"\nand an aspect of the true esoteric solution is before us. But\na wider generalization is now to be formulated.\n\nSo far as our present *Fourth Round *terrestrial period is\nconcerned, the mammalian fauna are alone to be regarded as traceable\nto prototypes shed by Man. The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes,\netc., are the resultants of the Third Round, astral fossil forms\nstored up in the auric envelope of the Earth and projected into\nphysical objectivity subsequent to the deposition of the first\nLaurentian rocks. \"Evolution\" has to deal with the progressive\nmodifications, which palaeontology shows to have affected the\nlower animal and vegetable kingdoms in the course of geological\ntime. It does not, and from the nature of things cannot, touch\non the subject of the pre-physical types which served as the basis\nfor future differentiation. Tabulate the general laws controlling\nthe development of physical organisms it certainly may, and to\na certain extent it has acquitted itself ably of the task.\n\nTo return to the immediate subject of discussion. The mammalia,\nwhose first traces are discovered in the marsupials of the Triassic\nrocks of the Secondary Period, were evolved from *purely*\nastral progenitors contemporary with the Second Race. They are\nthus *post-Human, *and, consequently, it is easy to account\nfor the general resemblance between their embryonic stages and\nthose of Man, who necessarily embraces in himself and epitomizes\nin his development the features of the group he originated. This\nexplanation disposes of a portion of the Darwinist brief. \"But\nhow to account for the presence of the gill-clefts in the human\nfoetus, which represent the stage through which the branchiae\nof the fish are developed;* for the pulsating vessel corresponding\nto the heart of the lower fishes, which constitutes the foetal\nheart; for the entire analogy presented by the segmentation of\nthe human ovum, the formation of the blastoderm, and the appearance\nof the 'gastrula' stage, with corresponding stages in lower vertebrate\nlife and even among the sponges; for the various types of lower\nanimal life which the form of the future child shadows forth in\nthe cycle of its growth?\" \"How comes it to pass that\nstages in the life of fishes, whose ancestors swam\" -- aeons\nbefore the epoch of the First Root-Race,\n\n####### [Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* \"At this period,\" writes Darwin, \"the arteries\nrun in arch-like branches, as if to carry the blood to branchiae\nwhich are not present in the higher vertebrata, though the slits\non the side of the neck still remain, marking their former (?)\nposition.\"\n\nIt is noteworthy that, though gill-clefts are absolutely useless\nto all but amphibia and fishes, etc., their appearance is regularly\nnoted in the foetal development of vertebrates. Even children\nare occasionally born with an opening in the neck corresponding\nto one of the clefts.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 685 REVERSION FROM THE WRONG END.\n\n-- \"in the seas of the Silurian period, as well as stages\nin that of the later amphibian, reptilian fauna, are mirrored\nin the 'epitomized history' of human foetal development?\"\n\nThis plausible objection is met by the reply that the *Third\nRound *terrestrial animal forms were just as much referable\nto types thrown off by Third Round man, as that new importation\ninto our planet's area -- the mammalian stock -- is to the Fourth\nRound Humanity of the Second Root-race. The process of human foetal\ngrowth epitomizes not only the general characteristics of the\nFourth, but of the Third Round terrestrial life. The diapason\nof type is run through in brief. Occultists are thus at no loss\nto \"account for\" the birth of children with an actual\ncaudal appendage, or for the fact that the tail in the human foetus\nis, at one period, double the length of the nascent legs. The\npotentiality of every organ useful to animal life is locked up\nin Man -- the microcosm of the Macrocosm -- and abnormal conditions\nmay not unfrequently result in the strange phenomena which Darwinists\nregard as \"reversion to ancestral features.\"* Reversion,\nindeed, but scarcely in the sense contemplated by our present-day\nempiricists!\n\n-------\n\n**C**\n\n**D**ARWINISM AND THE **A**NTIQUITY OF **M**AN: **T**HE\n**A**NTHROPOIDS\n\nAND THEIR **A**NCESTRY.\n\nThe public has been notified by more than one eminent modern geologist\nand man of science, that \"all estimate of geological duration\nis not merely *impossible, *but necessarily imperfect; for\nwe are ignorant of the causes, though they must have existed,\nwhich quickened or retarded the progress of the sedimentary deposits.\"**\nAnd now another man of Science, as well known (Croll), calculating\nthat the tertiary age began either 15 or 2 1/2 million of years\nago -- the former being a more correct calculation, according\nto Esoteric doctrine, than the latter there -- seems in this case,\nat least, no very great disagreement. Exact Science, refusing\nto see in man \"a special creation\" (to a certain degree\nthe Secret Sciences do the same), is at liberty to ignore the\nfirst three, or rather two-and-a-half Races -- *the Spiritual,\nthe semi-astral, and the*\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* Those who with Haeckel regard the gill-clefts with their attendant\nphenomena as illustrative of an active function in our amphibian\nand piscine ancestors (Vide his **XII.** and **XIII**.\nstages), ought to explain why the \"*Vegetable with leaflets*\"*\n*(Lefevre) represented in foetal growth, does not appear in\nhis 22 stages through which the monera have passed in their ascent\nto Man. Haeckel does *not* postulate a *vegetable *ancestor.\nThe embryological argument is thus a two-edged sword and here\ncuts its possessor.\n\n** \"Physiology,\" Lefevre, p. 480.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 686 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\n*semi-human -*- of our teachings. But it can hardly do the\nsame in the case of the Third at its closing period, the Fourth,\nand the Fifth Races, since it already divides mankind into Palaeolithic\nand Neolithic man.* The geologists of France place man in the\nmid-miocene age (Gabriel de Mortillet), and some even in the *Secondary\n*period, as de Quatrefages suggests; while the English *savants\n*do not generally accept such antiquity for their species.\nBut they may know better some day. For \"If we consider,\"\nsays Sir Charles Lyell in \"Antiquity of Man,\" p. 246\n--\n\n\"the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and works\nof art in all strata, whether marine or fresh water, even in those\nformed in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by millions\nof human beings, we shall be prepared for the general dearth of\nhuman memorials in glacial formations, whether recent, Pleistocene,\nor of more ancient date. If there were a few wanderers over lands\ncovered with glaciers, or over seas infested with icebergs, and\nif a few of them left their bones or weapons in moraines or in\nmarine drifts, the chances, after the lapse of thousands of years,\nof a geologist meeting with one of them must be infinitesimally\nsmall.\"\n\nThe men of Science avoid pinning themselves down to any definite\nstatement concerning the age of man, as indeed they hardly could,\nand thus leave enormous latitude to bolder speculations. Nevertheless,\nwhile the majority of the Anthropologists carry back the existence\nof man *only *into the period of the *post*-glacial\ndrift, or what is called the Quaternary period, those of them\nwho, as *Evolutionists, trace man to a common origin with that\nof the monkey, *do not show great consistency in their speculations.\nThe Darwinian hypothesis demands, in reality, a far greater antiquity\nfor man, than is even dimly suspected by superficial thinkers.\nThis is proven by the greatest authorities on the question --\nMr. Huxley, for instance. Those, therefore, who accept the Darwinian\nevolution, *ipso facto *hold very tenaciously to an antiquity\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* We confess to not being able to see any good reasons for Mr.\nE. Clodd's certain statement in *Knowledge. *Speaking of\nthe men of Neolithic times, \"concerning whom Mr. Grant Allen\nhas given . . . a vivid and accurate sketch,\" and who are\n\"the direct ancestors of peoples of whom remnants yet lurk\nin out-of-the-way corners of Europe, where they have been squeezed\nor stranded,\" he adds to this: \"but the men of Palaeolithic\ntimes can be identified with no existing races; they were savages\nof a more degraded type than any extant; tall, yet barely erect,\nwith short legs and twisted knees, with prognathous, that is,\nprojecting ape-like jaws, and small brains. Whence they come we\ncannot tell, and their 'grave knoweth no man to this day.' \"\n\nBesides the possibility that there may be men who *know*\nwhence they came and how they perished -- it is not true to say\nthat the Palaeolithic men, or their fossils, are all found with\n\"small brains.\" The oldest skull of all those hitherto\nfound, the \"Neanderthal skull,\" is of average capacity,\nand Mr. Huxley was compelled to confess that it was no real approximation\nwhatever to that of the \"missing link.\" There are aboriginal\ntribes in India whose brains are far smaller and nearer to that\nof the ape than any hitherto found among the skulls of Palaeolithic\nman.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 687 GRANT ALLEN'S ILLUSIONS.\n\nof man so very great, indeed, that it falls not so far short of\nthe Occultist's estimate.* The modest thousands of years of the\n*Encyclopaedia Britannica *and the 100,000 years, to which\nAnthropology in general limits the age of Humanity, seem quite\nmicroscopical when compared with the figures implied in Mr. Huxley's\nbold speculations. The former, indeed, makes of the original race\nof men ape-like cave-dwellers. The great English biologist, in\nhis desire to prove man's pithecoid origin, insists that the transformation\nof the primordial ape into a human being must have occurred *millions\nof years back. *For in criticising the excellent average cranial\ncapacity of the Neanderthal skull, notwithstanding his assertion\nthat it is overlaid with \"pithecoid bony walls,\" coupled\nwith Mr. Grant Allen's assurances that this skull \"possesses\nlarge bosses on the forehead, strikingly (?) suggestive of those\nwhich give the gorilla its peculiarly fierce appearance,\"**\n(*Fortnightly Review, *1882,) still Mr. Huxley is forced\nto admit that, in the said skull, his theory is once more defeated\nby the \"completely human proportions of the accompanying\nlimb-bones, together with the fair development of the Engis skull.\"\nIn consequence of all this we are notified that those skulls,\n\"clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial\nstock whence man has proceeded, need no longer be sought by those\nwho entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development\nin the newest Tertiaries; but that they *may be looked for in\nan epoch more distant from the age of the *ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS\n*than that is from us*\"**** *(Huxley).\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n* The *actual* time required for such a theoretical transformation\nis necessarily enormous. \"If,\" says Professor Pfaff,\n\"in the hundreds of thousands of years which you (the Evolutionists)\naccept between the rise of palaeolithic man and our own day, a\ngreater distance of man from the brute is not demonstrable, (*the\nmost ancient man was just as far removed from the brute as the\nnow living man*), what reasonable ground can be advanced for\nbelieving that man has been developed from the brute, and has\nreceded further from it by infinitely small gradations.\"\n. . . . \"*The longer the interval of time placed between\nour times and the so-called palaeolithic men, the more ominous\nand destructive for the theory of the gradual development of man\nfrom the animal kingdom is the result stated.*\"* *Huxley\nstates (\"Man's Place in Nature,\" p. 159) that the *most\nliberal* estimates for the antiquity of Man *must be still\nfurther *extended.\n\n** The baselessness of this assertion, as well as that of many\nother exaggerations of the imaginative Mr. Grant Allen, was ably\nexposed by the eminent anatomist, Professor R. Owen, in \"Longman's\nMagazine,\" No. 1. Must it be repeated, moreover, that the\nCro-Magnon Palaeolithic type is superior to a very large number\nof existing races?\n\n*** It thus stands to reason that science would never dream of\na *pre*-tertiary man, and that de Quatrefages' *secondary*\nman makes every Academician and \"**F.R.S**.\"\nfaint with horror because, TO PRESERVE THE APE-THEORY, SCIENCE\nMUST MAKE MAN POST-SECONDARY. This is just what de Quatrefages\nhas twitted the Darwinists with, adding, that on the whole there\nwere more scientific reasons to trace the ape from man than man\nfrom the anthropoid. With this exception science has not one single\nvalid argu- [[Footnote continued on next page]]\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 688 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.\n\nAn *untold *antiquity for man is thus, then, the scientific\n*sine qua non *in the question of Darwinian Evolution, since\nthe oldest Palaeolithic man shows as yet no appreciable differentiation\nfrom his modern descendant. It is only of late that modern Science\nbegan to widen with every year the abyss that now separates her\nfrom old Science, that of the Plinies and Hippocrateses, none\nof whom would have derided the archaic teachings with respect\nto the evolution of the human races and animal species, as the\npresent day Scientist -- geologist or anthropologist -- is sure\nto do.\n\nHolding, as we do, that the mammalian type was a post-human Fourth\nRound product, the following diagram -- as the writer understands\nthe teaching -- may make the process clear: --\n\nThe unnatural union was *invariably *fertile, because the\nthen mammalian types *were not remote enough *from their\nRoot-type* -- Primeval Astral\n\n####### [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------\n\n[[Footnote continued from previous page]] ment to offer against\nthe antiquity of man. But in this case modern Evolution demands\nfar more than the fifteen million years of Croll for the Tertiary\nperiod, for two very simple but good reasons: (*a*) No anthropoid\nape has been found before the Miocene period: (*b*) man's\nflint relics have been traced to the Pliocene and their presence\n*suspected, *if not accepted by all, in the Miocene strata.\nAgain, where is the \"missing link\" in such case? And\nhow could even a Palaeolithic Savage, a \"Man of Canstadt,\"\nevolve into *thinking* men from the brute Dryopithecus of\nthe Miocene *in* *so short a time. *One sees now the\nreason why Darwin rejected the theory that only 60,000,000 years\nhad elapsed since the Cambrian period. \"He judges from the\nsmall amount of organic changes since the glacial epoch, and adds\nthat the previous 140 million years can hardly be considered as\nsufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which\ncertainly existed toward the close of the Cambrian period.\"\n(Ch. Gould.)\n\n* Let us remember in this connection the esoteric teaching which\ntells us of Man having had in the Third Round a GIGANTIC APE-LIKE\nFORM on the astral plane. And similarly at the close of the Third\nRace in this Round. Thus it accounts for the *human* features\nof the apes, especially of the later anthropoids -- apart from\nthe fact that these latter preserve by *Heredity *a resemblance\nto their Atlanto-Lemurian sires.\n\n####### [[Vol. 2, Page]] 689 THE INCUBUS OF ETHNOLOGY.\n\nMan -- to develop the necessary barrier. Medical science records\nsuch cases of monsters, bred from human and animal parents, even\nin our own day. The possibility is, therefore, only one of *degree,\n*not of fact. Thus it is that Occultism solves one of the strangest\nproblems presented to the consideration of the anthropologist.\n\nThe pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now\nfinally emancipated herself from the shackles of theology, Science\nhas embraced the opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to interpret\nNature on purely materialistic lines, she has built up that most\nextravagant theory of the ages -- the derivation of man from a\nferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has this doctrine, in one\nform or another, now become, that the most Herculean efforts will\nbe needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian anthropology\nis the incubus of the ethnologist, a sturdy child of modem Materialism,\nwhich has grown up and acquired increasing vigour, as the ineptitude\nof the theological legend of Man's \"creation\" became\nmore and more apparent. It has thriven on account of the strange\ndelusion that -- as a scientist of repute puts it -- \"All\nhypotheses and theories with respect to the rise of man can be\nreduced to *two *(the Evolutionist and the Biblical exoteric\naccount) . . . There is no other hypothesis conceivable . . .\n\" !! The anthropology of the secret volumes is, however,\nthe best possible answer to such a worthless contention.\n\nThe anatomical resemblance between Man and the higher Ape, so\nfrequently cited by Darwinists as pointing to some former ancestor\ncommon to both, presents an interesting problem, the proper solution\nof which is to be sought for in the esoteric explanation of the\ngenesis of the pithecoid stocks. We have given it as far as was\nuseful, by stating that the bestiality of the primeval mindless\nraces resulted in the production of huge man-like monsters --\nthe offspring of human and animal parents. As time rolled on,\nand the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical,\nthe descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions,\nuntil the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes\nof the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed\nthe sin of the \"Mindless\" -- this time with full responsibility.\nThe resultants of their crime were the species of apes now known\nas Anthropoid.\n\nIt may be useful to compare this very simple theory -- and we\nare willing to offer it even as a hypothesis to the unbelievers\n-- with the Darwinian scheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles,\nthat no sooner is one of these overcome by a more or less ingenious\nhypothesis, than ten worse difficulties are forthwith discovered\nbehind the one disposed of.\n\n-------\n\nNext Section\n\nContents",
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